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TI: But at this point, let's talk about December 7, 1941, so the beginning of the war. Do you remember how you heard about...

MI: Well, we were living at 1903 Terry, which is an apartment house. And then one of the tenants came down and said, "Put the radio on, I think there's a war with Japan." And that's how we found out about...

TI: And who was with you?

MI: Well, all of us were somewhere in the apartment doing something.

TI: Now, so it's Sunday. Wouldn't you be at church?

MI: Well, it was in the afternoon.

TI: Oh, so this is after church? And do you remember, so you had, again, setting the scene, so the family's there. You had three older sisters, an older brother, your parents, and then Chuck, so there's eight of you. Was there any, do you recall any discussion about what was going on?

MI: Well, we were just listening to the radio.

TI: Because I was thinking about, especially, your older siblings. Kaji was, like, I think a senior.

MI: Senior at Broadway.

TI: Broadway, and she was actually a really top student. I know she got an award, she was voted top student by her classmates. You had Hiroko, who had already graduated, you had...

MI: She was working for Jimmie Sakamoto.

TI: Jimmie Sakamoto with the JACL. You had your older brother who was at the University of Washington. And in particular, I was thinking of the older siblings. Did they talk about what was going on and maybe their concerns or anything?

MI: Well, I think at that time it was, let's wait and see what's going to happen. I mean, you just couldn't make any decisions or anything. But so we were kind of curious how school was going to be.

TI: Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask. What happened?

MI: Yeah, Monday we all went to school. And then the first thing, for the assembly, we had to listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

TI: So you heard that speech where he says, "December 7th is a date that will live in infamy"?

MI: I think I cried because it was so sad for me, my gosh.

TI: But so at Maryknoll they had, like, an assembly?

MI: Well, see, I was at Broadway then.

TI: Oh, so by then you were at Broadway.

MI: I was a freshman then.

TI: That's right. You graduated in 1941.

MI: '41, yeah. Late '41 was...

TI: Right, so you had just started Broadway.

MI: Yeah, September, October, November, December, the fourth month.

TI: Oh, so that's right, so you were gone. Because essentially, going back to Maryknoll, because it was all Japanese, when the Japanese left, they shut it down.

MI: Well, I know they graduated the class of '42, but it was a real early graduation. And they said that after they left, Maryknoll was just bare, because there weren't that many Filipino students.

TI: Well, they closed the school after.

MI: I think they got through with the school, and then after that they had to close it because there was no students.

TI: That's what Bob...

MI: Santos.

TI: ...Santos said, yeah.

MI: And then they had to go to another school for the following year.

TI: But at that time, was Chuck at Maryknoll?

MI: Chuck was at Maryknoll, yeah. I was at Broadway. Ish was at Broadway, and Kaji was at the senior...

TI: And so Broadway you remember that assembly, listened to the speech, sounds like it was very sad, emotional.

MI: And then you hear of other people, what happened to them.

TI: So how was it for you? You went from a school, Maryknoll, which was all Japanese students, Japanese American students, to Broadway, which was...

MI: It was an eye-opener to see so many other Japanese at the public schools.

TI: Oh, at Broadway?

MI: Yeah, Broadway was just a whole mess of Japanese. Because you figure freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, four classes there.

TI: And so roughly if you had a class of, say, twenty-five students, how many of them would be Japanese? Like what percentage, roughly, do you think?

MI: Well, at Broadway, I'll have about four or five Japanese in each class.

TI: So probably about twenty, twenty-five percent.

MI: There were a lot of Caucasians. That's when you kind of realized, it's a different world from Maryknoll.

TI: And how did that feel for you, going from...

MI: What?

TI: How did that feel going from kind of a small...

MI: As long as we had a good education, and we knew more than some of the students, I was comfortable.

TI: Okay, so you felt that your education was good.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.